Sacred Trickery and the Way of Kindness: The Radical Wisdom of Jodo

By Alejandro Jodorowsky and Gilles Farcet

Enter the mind of Jodo and follow his initiatory saga from Zen disciple to revolutionary filmmaker to spiritual teacher

• Explores the sacred trickery of shamans he encountered, including Carlos Castaneda, and how intention and action matter more than notions of “true” and “false”

• Explains the Way of Kindness and how small acts of generosity and goodness can have a profound effect on your spirit, infusing life with a wealth of happiness

• Includes contributions from friends and students of Jodorowsky on their experiences with him, including his son Adan Jodorowsky

Known for his surrealist films, his unique approach to tarot, his symbolic comics, and his shamanic therapeutic method of psychomagic, Alejandro Jodorowsky has accomplished an extraordinary amount in his more than 80 years. In this book, we get an intimate look into the inner workings of the cult figure of Jodo. What is revealed is a man who has evolved since his groundbreaking films of the 1970s, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, a man who has grown from a sacred trickster, a shaman of psychomagic, into a brilliant spiritual maverick of the 21st century. We get to see Jodo’s own reflections on the rich tapestry of his remarkable life, including the initiatory failure of the Dune film project, which combined the talents of a multitude of creative greats, including Moebius, Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, and H. R. Giger. We learn about Jodo’s years with Marcel Marceau and with great masters such as Ejo Takata, whose Zen training featured strenuous physical and mental ordeals; the sorceress Pachita, who performed psychic surgery on Jodo; and the mysterious Carlos Castaneda, whose sacred trickery reveals how intentions matter more than notions of “true” and “false.”

Discussing the Way of Kindness that he now follows, Jodo reveals how intentionally practicing small acts of generosity and goodness can have a profound effect on your spirit, infusing life with a wealth of happiness.

From sacred trickery to the path of kindness, Jodo’s radical wisdom discerns the timeless within the immediate and gauges the everyday by the measure of eternity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inner Traditions
• Release date: Feb 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781620554609

Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro Jodorowsky(Tocopilla, Chile 1929), artista múltiple, poeta, novelista, director de teatro y cine de culto (El Topo o La Montaña Sagrada), actor, creador de cómics (El Incal o Los Metabarones), tarólogo y terapeuta, ha creado dos técnicas que han revolucionado la psicoterapia en numerosos países. La primera de ellas, la Psicogenealogía, sirvió de base para su novela Donde mejor canta un pájaro, y la segunda, la Psicomagia, fue utilizada por Jodorowsky en El niño del jueves negro. Su autobiografía, La danza de la realidad, desarrolla y explica estas dos técnicas.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

TRICKERY, FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

By Gilles Farcet

In 1989 Dervy published La Tricherie sacrée, a small volume of spontaneous conversations between Alejandro Jodorowsky and myself. This little book had a surprising destiny: without causing any hubbub, it continued to attract new readers over the years. Jodo already had a solid reputation as a storyline writer of bandes dessinées, which he insisted on calling by their American name, comics.*1 He was also known in France, his adopted country, as well as on the other side of the Atlantic, as a director of pioneering cult films. He was less well known as a free and brilliant spiritual maverick.

A free and brilliant maverick indeed, for how can one describe this man? A tarologist? But he is more than that, even though the consultations one finds advertised today in numerous trendy coffee shops have their origins in his Mystic Cabaret and in many cases are offered by his disciples. Spiritual master? Even though he sometimes likes to describe himself as a poor guru exploited by the spiritual business, Jodo is not and does not pretend to be a master in the traditional sense of the term. He does not fit into any specific tradition, even though he often makes reference to the masters who crossed his path, notably the Zen roshi Ejo Takata, the sorceress Pachita, and the mysterious Castaneda. As he has explained in our more recent conversations, when he believes that someone who has come to consult with him needs contact with a spiritual master, he directs her toward Arnaud Desjardins, because Jodorowsky does not see himself as proposing a path. An extraordinary esotericist? A healer always ready to pull a psychomagical act out of his hat? An atypical sorcerer? A transcendental illusionist? A sublime charlatan? In truth, regarding his spiritual life, as in all other aspects of his incredibly rich life, Jodorowsky is a being outside of the norm, one of those people whose very existence is an initiatory saga.

However abundant and varied his creativity may be, it is supported by an inner life, a truly spiritual journey. And the present book was the first significant account of that journey. Coming about as a small miracle, this book, conceived of when its subject had just reached the age of sixty, inaugurated a new era for him. While still pursuing his artistic activities—essentially the comics—he became increasingly known among certain people in his role as a magus, much like Gurdjieff in his time, with whom Jodorowsky shares the distinction of having influenced numerous artists, as the testimonies in the third part of this book will show.

La Tricherie was also the prelude to another book, Le Théâtre de la guérison, in which Alejandro developed his psychomagical vision.

Here I would like to share some memories from the era following the publication of La Tricherie.

I saw Alejandro and Arnaud Desjardins again on the occasion of their first meeting together, at my residence in Paris. I remember Arnaud as his familiar self—curious—as a producer, to meet another filmmaker, and interested, as a disciple of the way—for although he acted as master, Arnaud lived above all as a disciple—to meet this unusual person whose depths he had become aware of through the reading of La Tricherie. And I remember Alejandro starting out sincerely shy, retreating into a corner at the beginning of the evening, wearing his purple suit, repeating in a candid tone: I am so in awe to meet such a person as Arnaud, I am only a poor man, what inestimable luck for a poor man like me . . .

The ice melted very quickly, and the timidity gave way to a very eloquent Jodo and an Arnaud radiating contentment. The former embarked upon a long discussion, as incomprehensible as it was fascinating, on the subject of the Ninja Turtles—in which, at the time, he saw as an esoteric saga (You understand, all explanations of the world today come down to the Ninja Turtles)—as well as his memories of David Carradine, the Kung Fu hero, giving a stunning demonstration of karate in his living room in Los Angeles, finally returning to his magical encounter with Castaneda.

When I met Arnaud at his publisher’s the next morning, he—who was always so measured, prudent, and difficult to impress, even when rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest spiritual names of the century—said to me, with a childlike smile, Now I’ve slept on it, I admit it: I am amazed by this Jodorowsky . . .

This was the beginning of a relationship of mutual respect. As Alejandro likes to say, they recognized one another mutually in their honesty.

And while we are on the subject of spiritual guides, I also remember a day in April 1992 when Lee Lozowick arrived. He was an American rock singer, relatively well known in France today, but at the time totally unknown.

As soon as he got off the plane from Arizona, on his first stay in France (which I had organized), he declared with a resolute air: I don’t want to relax. No rest! I want action!

Because people at the end of a fourteen-hour trip involving a time change generally prefer a gentle beginning for their visit, I thought I had done well not to plan anything in particular for that first evening. What, then, could I suggest? How to improvise a fun time for a frenetic American guru and his entourage (for he was traveling with about ten people, his students, family, friends)? And then the obvious solution suddenly presented itself. Jodo! What other person could I call on the spur of the moment to entertain a clan of American shamanic rock disciples?

Hello, Alejandro?

Good evening. . . . An American guru? Bring them all over; I’ll be expecting you at my place . . .

So it was that Lee and his entourage headed for the suburb of Vincennes and spent their first evening in Paris in very creative company, for besides the master of the house, we found there none other than Mœbius and Boucq, two masters of comics reunited with their scriptwriter, mentor, and friend. We all sat around on cushions in a room of the house and improvised a sort of spontaneous workshop, led by Jodo with great verve in an English that was as fluent and melodious as his French. Each person talked about his practices, his manner of working, until Alejandro delivered the conclusion with his typical serious humor: The problem is, we all agree! The evening ended with Mœbius and Boucq each hunched over a piece of paper on the floor, working on drawings for Lee. These drawings can be seen today, hanging in the refectory of his ashram in Arizona.

During this period I also remember beginning to panic when I found that Jodo appeared not to know how to follow a schedule and wrote nothing down. When we had to be at public engagements, this led to situations that were disconcerting but, in the end, always instructive. Later he relied on his partner, Marianne, to help him keep his appointments, but at that time he had no stable companion to look out for him. As a consequence I was left with the task of calming down an auditorium full of several hundred people who had come to see him and of tracking down Jodo—who had simply forgotten—while praying that he had not fled to Mexico or embarked on some other adventure.

A few more jumbled images: Jodo consulting his magnificent notebook of dreams, an enormous colored volume in which he wrote them down, and a letter suddenly falling out of it, which, when I picked it up, turned out to be from John Lennon . . .

Jodo at the Marjolaine, getting up in front of a conference room full of people who had come, due to an error in the program, to hear Dr. Woestlandt, and declaring royally: Listen . . . I am not the Dr. Westphaler whom you have come to see. But the person is of no importance. I did not want to come to the Marjolaine, but I am here. So because I am here, pretend that I am Dr. Wiesen-Wiesen and ask me your questions. I will answer as if I were Dr. Woof-Woof . . .

What could have been relatively disastrous ended in triumph, with Jodo tearing himself away from a crowd of new admirers in order to search for the stand where he could find the book written by the person the audience had originally come to see: In any case, I will buy the book of this Doctor Westphallus . . .

Jodo publicly breaking all the rules of the spiritually correct and improvising a psychomagical act to teach a lesson to a conference organizer whom he considered greedy—see the story he tells in our interviews. Jodo telling dirty jokes and extracting esoteric meaning from them—see his book La Sagesse des blagues (The Wisdom of Jokes).

Jodo presiding over his Mystic Cabaret in front of an auditorium packed with aficionados who had come, drawn solely by word of mouth, to participate in this free weekly workshop . . .

I am certain of one thing: whatever the many and sometimes disturbing facets of his personality, Jodorowsky is a good man, kind and brilliant, driven by generous intentions.

The 2004 edition of La Tricherie sacrée is an expanded version of the little book that was published in 1989 and is organized as follows:

First following this preface is the unaltered main text of the 1989 edition, including the original preface and the brief postscript. This is followed by a new, briefer dialogue between us, where we catch up with each other fifteen years later. Finally the third section of this new edition consists of testimonies from four very different personalities, their common factor being that they were marked, in some way or another, by their encounter with Jodorowsky. For this I thank Philippe Manœuvre, Coralie Trin Thi, François Boucq, and Arnaud Desjardins, who kindly shared some time with me in order to pay homage to Jodo. I believe that these testimonies allow for a better glimpse into the dimension and universality of his personality.

I am grateful also for the confidences of one of his three living sons, Adan.

Finally there is a Jodorowskian pirouette in which the interviewer becomes the interviewee.

I would like to thank Lila Faure for her excellent work in recapturing the text of the first edition and Éditions Dervy for breathing new life into La Tricherie.

Let the party go on!

GILLES FARCET

CHARMES, JANUARY 2004

PART ONE

Sacred Trickery

1989

ONE

UNDER JODO’S SUN

It was many years ago that I first viewed Alejandro Jodorowsky with admiration, tinged with fear . . .

I must have been seventeen years old when a substantial article in Rock & Folk made me aware of the existence on this planet of a madman determined to put the world of Frank Herbert’s initiatory novel, Dune, onto film. For that purpose this maniac was associating with another demented demiurge, the artist Mœbius, otherwise Jean Giraud, whose adventures of Lieutenant Blueberry had marked the lost prairie of my childhood. Those first years, passing so slowly, leading unbeknownst toward the crevice of adolescence, remain forever like a Far West of my soul.

I was seventeen, then, and aching to rediscover the trail of some Far West of my consciousness, leading in some direction in which I could go adventuring, filled with the confusing forces of adolescence. And here was Alejandro Jodorowsky, revealing himself as a dancer of the frontier, a cosmic clown shaped by immemorial wisdom and futuristic imagination.

At first without having approached him in person, what I admired in him was the multivoiced creator, the Panic-instigator, the burlesque sorcerer, the picaresque character traveling through the shimmering network of traditions, archetypes, and forms of expression, gathering beams of light and mixing them in his cauldron in order to concoct an elixir of awakening, of which we were allowed a few sips, sometimes in the form of a film, sometimes a bande dessinée, sometimes a novel, or even a lecture-happening.

I wandered into an art/experimental cinema where, by chance, El Topo and The Holy Mountain were playing. This Jodorowsky was manifestly not a stunted intellectual, but a heroic figure. I became determined to meet him and gave him a prominent place in the midst of my little personal pantheon.

In matters of human contact, as in all other things, haste is a bad guide; therefore I did not seek to bring about the meeting, convinced that it would occur on its own.

And it did, thirty years later. I should explain that although I had long been aware of the talks given by Jodorowsky in his Mystic Cabarets, I never thought it suitable for me to attend. The meeting I hoped for was more intimate.

And behold, at the beginning of this year 1989, propitious for so many revolutions, Marc de Smedt asked me to find this man for the magazine Nouvelles Clés, in order to pick his brain regarding his interactions in Mexico with Carlos Castaneda, another heroic figure surrounded by his own smoky halo.

Telling myself that these two sorcerers must have had an understanding between them, I picked up the telephone and found myself listening to a melodious voice that told me to come to Vincennes immediately if I wanted a chance to conduct my interview. You see, I leave tomorrow, I take the airplane at two o’clock in the afternoon . . .

Could we not meet in the morning?

No, tonight I have my lecture, then I have dinner with my family, and I go to bed at four in the morning. Tomorrow, I sleep until eleven, and I take the airplane. So you must come now.

Understanding that this devil of a man was not one of those people who live riveted to a schedule, and that with him it was best to act on the spur of the moment, I hung up the phone, shoved a blank cassette and tape recorder into a bag, and abandoned the battlefield of my office to catch a taxi for Vincennes, where Jodorowsky lived with his family.

My friend Christian Charrière, founder of the Bureau of Dreams, had taught me to listen for the confused words that reality whispers to us, to travel through the world as if it were a forest of symbols. Thus I noted that my demiurge happened to live on the Boulevard de la Libération. The taxi driver, understandably, got lost and drove around several streets before dropping me on the aforesaid boulevard, in front of a little garden—a presage of innocence regained.

The house I entered was obviously devoted to creativity: there was a piano at which a very young boy was toiling, a drum set, a typewriter, a great many books, and above all, a vague feeling of freedom, a climate of joyous spontaneity, very far removed from the malaise that one sometimes feels in those homes that are called bohemian but are in fact abandoned to sloppiness. At last, the master of the house stood before me, in a vast library, a space consecrated to books and furnished only with two or three chairs. It was as if the thousands of volumes were surrounding emptiness, delimiting a void, in which